


The Painting Of A Sorrow

by prettyjk



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Blood, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:40:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyjk/pseuds/prettyjk
Summary: "Would you kill me, if it came to that?"(((Like the painting of a sorrow/A face without a heart)))Inspired in part by The Picture Of Dorian Gray, by Oscar WildeChanlix doomed soulmates. Feel free to treat each chapter as a one-shot, they are part of the wider story but can be understood easily on their own.This is an entirely self-indulgent prose-ish style kinda thing. Disturbing themes. Please check the tags before reading!
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Felix
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	1. Zenith

> **_"We shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly."_ ** _-The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde_

_"Would you kill me, if it came to that?"_

Chan catches the question from point-blank range against the shell of his ear. The murmured voice is deeper and more devastating than tectonic plates shifting beneath the ocean.

_"Felix."_

It isn't an answer to the question. Neither is it a statement. He says the name like a plea, a prayer; but the cars have already collided, the credits are rolling, the flame is guttering. 

Delicate lips against his temple, another point-blank blow. Felix kisses Chan's closed eyelids, and keeps asking questions.

" _Would you do it?"_

Chan feels his voice vibrate between his eyes. The plates of Chan's earth are shifting in that voice, he has no doubt about it now, and the ground beneath their feet is just the thinnest coat of paint on the skin of the world. The thinnest coat of paint, and even that has begun to chip.

There was a rich lacquer over Felix's being, in the beginning. He was doused in an aura like sunshine, and it could hold Chan, too. He turned his face to that light like a plant that has only known darkness, and thus has never bloomed flowers or felt satiated.

His hunger was a living thing for a long time. It stalked back and forth in his body constantly, a petulant king, ruling everything and resenting it. Even then, he knew responsibility was inherent in ownership. It was for precisely this reason that he never wanted Felix to offer himself up. 

He would have to say no, would have to withhold, would have to wean Felix off of him. He would have to block out the sun. The heat was delicious, and the light allowed him to see, but it was okay. He'd freeze for Felix, go blind for Felix. That was how he began, after all; cold and sightless. It seemed incredible that he could forget, but he really almost had. That was the effect of constant sunlight; heatstroke ruined your memory, and the ultraviolet rays bleached everything over time. 

The hunger was a living thing, a tangible thing, and so was the thirst. They wound together in endless tandem, a double helix, creating and becoming everything. Chan would fast for days on end. Emptiness felt like cleanliness, that was the truth of the matter. He supposed it always would. Feeling clean was one of the only reprieves he could turn to, back in those days where the fear was not just huge, but titanic.

Chan had read about medieval doctors, once, when he was young. Humors built up in the blood, they said, and had to be drained periodically. He thought he could sympathize with that line of thought. Sometimes he felt acutely as though his blood was poisoning him, searing through his veins and dyeing them black, rushing through his heart in sickly torrents.

Bloodletting was the only thing that seemed to quell the effervescent burn in his arteries. It felt ritualistic; snap a fresh blade off the utility knife, prepare the tissues, find the right patch of skin. His thighs were latticed with scars that were in different stages of fresh and fading. They felt alien to him, as though they existed on someone else's body. Felix said they were okay, though, so they were. It truly was that simple. When he touched them, it was as though they ceased to exist at all.

_"Chris?"_

His English name. Felix used his English name when he was trying to get his attention, trying to be taken seriously. It conjured up memories of home, of the way the jacaranda trees bloomed in riotous purple in the summer, the way the lights shone on the water of Darling Harbour at night. Chan wanted to see the jacaranda blossoms again. He thought of them whenever he sucked deep violet bruises into Felix's skin. Both bloomed shamelessly and intense, but only one was lethal.

Would he do it? A better question was; could he say no? Not to _Felix,_ surely? Maybe, if it was the only way to spare him. To spare him from Chan, if only to preserve that ethereal grace, the all encompassing light. He didn't know if he could extricate himself cleanly anymore. If he could sever their ties and only himself be cut, he'd do it. There was no option for that, however, not in reality. 

He hated to think that he might be trying to spare himself pain under the guise of protecting Felix. That would be selfish, cowardly, exploitative of their trust in one another. What was more pain to him? What did it matter? He'd desensitized himself from the sensation, not by choice, but by overuse. He would bear the pain, even if keeping Felix safe plunged him into the depths of purgatory, and left him there to languish. It was enough to have known Felix; it was enough to have touched and been touched by him. Chan knew it was its own little miracle that his skin hadn't blistered from the heat of them pressing their bodies into each other. No blisters, but he hadn't come out unscathed. That was never the way it worked; a price had to be paid eventually. Chan knew he was stepping up to pay that price, now. The debt collector had arrived, and it's name was Legion, for they were many.


	2. Hellste Stern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Brightest Star"  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Content warnings for this chapter: More self harm, mild gore, there's just a pretty gross moment in this chapter to do with scabs, don't say I didn't warn ya xoxo

> **" _To see him is to worship him, to know him is to trust him."_** _-The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde_

They stayed like that for days. Felix had stopped asking. He seemed to know that Chan was asking _for_ him, now; and he was, his inner dialogue always prodding at him, going over the words the way you'd lick at a wound on your lip that you couldn't leave alone. They repeated themselves over and over in his head, joining like links in a chain that tethered him to fear and left welts on his neck;

_"Would you kill me? Kill me? Would you, Chris? If it came to that? If I asked you to? Would you? Would you? Would you?"_

And, this time in his own voice, instead of Felix's: 

_"Can I?"_

To take his life would be a tangible gesture to what he feared had already happened. He might be sleeping with, eating with, caring for, little more than a walking corpse. Felix promised that he still felt enough love for him to sustain himself. But Chan knew him better than anyone else, and he thought that he might already be dead. That was the unthinkable, the unbearable. But it was an idea that _had_ to be thought of, _had_ to be bore. If Felix had seen him come back to life by degrees, couldn't he begin to covet the process, just reversed? If the pain and the fear were great enough?

Chan used to think he could fix him. This thought only came when that jet-black feeling had crept up impressively on Felix, surprising him, surprising Chan even more so. It was a reversal of roles, so total and seamless that it was eerie. The new wounds on his thighs wept like trees leaking sap from where their branches had been sheared off. They both saw the bloodstains on their sheets, but neither of them said anything. On a stormy night, where the rain was assaulting the windows and their bedroom was so dark they were blind, he felt Felix's fingertips ghosting over the scabs, his mouth sealed over Chan's cock.

_"Lix-"_

It was a pet name Chan saved for their most vulnerable moments together. _"It makes me feel safe"_ , Felix had confided, and so it remained. He hummed in answer, pausing his movements for Chan to instruct him.

_"Scratch them. Please. Break them open again."_

There was a moment of pause, time for deliberation. In the end, there was no question. Felix used the blunt nails of his right hand to scrape away at the scabs on Chan's thigh. He didn't stop until the wound was a streaming mess, until the scabs, which had been crafted by careful platelets, built up under his fingernails. He smeared his palm into the reopened incisions while Chan came down his throat with a sob. Felix cleaned his fingers with his mouth. 

_"Would you?"_

The voice in his head that belonged exclusively to Felix never grew tired of asking. He could. _He could kill him._ Neither of them would go to heaven. Chan would be refused entrance for taking a life; Felix was so much like him that he would be committing a strange kind of suicide through him. 

That didn't matter to him, though, not really. He had known the purest feelings, the greatest extent of which the human mind could experience, and even more that was simply beyond comprehension. There was only language enough to express so much. The rest had to be felt. Felix had made him feel that. He was a waking dream. The details he knew intimately ordered themselves with practiced precision, and he could see it all without looking at him; the platinum blonde of his hair, softness that begged to be tucked behind an ear prettily. Delicate cheekbones, a button nose he liked to kiss, if only to see the way it scrunched in a smile. Felix had a feline grace to his eyes, the irises flecked in deep brown. His pupils were always wide and clear- he didn't mind his reflection so much when it was mirrored in those eyes. Felix's lips pouted naturally, curved in a heart shape, with a strongly carved cupid's bow. He knew the delicate lines of those lips, how fragile they felt under his own, how resilient they were when he bit down on them. That was his duality: he was soft and smooth, sharp and strong, gentle and rough. Chan's favourite of the features he'd come to know were the freckles sprinkled over his cheeks, under his eyes, across his temples. Asteria herself had placed them on his honeyed skin; they were their own constellation, the milky way plucked from the sky and painted in mortal pigment across his face. Chan liked to count them, or attempt to, as they lay side by side. He kissed them reverently, ran his thumb over them with a gentleness that almost hurt their owner. It was easy for both of them to come to terms with harsh blows; something else entirely for them to accept kind touches.

All it came down to, in Chan's mind, was that Felix was made to be worshiped. He wasn't just created, he was crafted. Chan used to think, selfishly, that he was crafted for Chan himself. Now, he was of the opinion that beauty of such a calibre could never really belong to anyone. It was a celestial anomaly that people like Felix were even indulged upon regular people like him.

Knowing this, what did it say about Chan that he was considering taking that being from the earth? The only consolation he could find, beyond granting Felix what he wanted, and assuaging his pain, was that he could join him. He could go with him, to hold his hand, wherever he might end up. If god existed, he would allow them that much. Chan knew, by this point in his life, that god didn't care. He didn't, hadn't, never would. He wouldn't last another day without guilt destroying him, if he cared. God didn't care, but he had a sense of fairness, at least in the way that mankind was a game to him. Victory wasn't as satisfying when one had to cheat. Even toddlers knew that to some degree, Chan thought. He would pay his fare, his own life serving as currency, and then he could protect Felix from this life and the next. It was all he had to give. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has become a piece about Chan idolising Felix as the angel he is and I'm not mad about it  
> Thanks for reading xoxo


	3. Meteoric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of suicidal ideation, planning, and attempting. You know what's coming, now; if you don't like what you get, you should've stopped at this final word.

> _**"It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution"** _ _The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde_

Once, three years ago now, Chan had tried to leave on his own. He wanted to slip off the cusp of the world, into that endless freefall of un-becoming. Everything hurt, everything. He felt so far removed from his family and his friends and his co-workers, he felt like the only human left in the world. Everyone else was wiped out by his personal dystopia. He could see them around him, could speak to them and be spoken back to, but every interaction had the feel of a dream to it. It had dawned on him, eventually, and with a sudden clarity, that he _was_ dreaming. The weekend before he almost departed, he'd driven to the edge of a park near the Han river. The smell of the water drifted to him as he rolled his window down, not unfriendly. It crept through the window enquiringly; who was visiting, at this hour? Another sacrifice, perhaps, for it to swallow? The river would go unfed; he wasn't there to ascend a bridge and leap. Instead, he was there to test a theory. 

_If I step out of my car, calmly, and walk to the water's edge. If I then walk into the water, sedately, casually, fully clothed. If, once up to my neck, I let my feet lift from the riverbed, and swim out a ways until I can no longer stand. If I float there in stasis, drifting in the current. If I take in a breath, and let my water-logged clothing drag me under. If I let myself sink. If I keep my eyes open, submerged completely, defenseless as a fetus in amniotic fluid._

_If, If, If._

_If I stay that way until my lungs are bursting. If I release the carbon dioxide in a flood, and watch it ascend in bubbles over my head. If I scream out loud into the water, with all the volume I can muster. If I let myself come as close to drowning as I can, before I go so far that I can't take it back. If, after thrashing to the surface, I take that first gasping breath, my lungs feeling hot and strained and angry._

_If I still feel nothing, if I resent the oxygen being pulled into my lungs, into my blood._

_Then. Then I'll know._

And as he sat back behind the wheel of his car, clad in sopping wet clothes, he wound the driver's-side window back up, slowly and methodically. He knew. He was still asleep; always would be. It was then that he began to scream again, and the screams were choked by sobs, and the sound ricocheted off the glass of the windshield, and his tears lost themselves in the river water that lay upon his skin.

Thus, it was decided. He would die. It made him feel nothing but acute relief.

Bloodletting had always helped by degrees- it stood to reason, then, that evacuating all of it would be total absolution.

Chan didn't eat for four days straight. When he died, he wanted to be clean. _Emptiness is cleanliness._ That old personal proverb of his. On the day he was due to depart, he drank water until he retched; he wanted his veins to be plump and hydrated, pressing up against his skin. When he flexed his hands, he could see the way the veins flexed over his tendons. Humans were really rather grotesque, he thought, as he watched them move. 

The bath he ran was scorching hot. He was beyond caring for avoidance of cliche; people did it this way because it worked. The heat of the water would make his veins easier to find, and therefore, easier to sever. A strange, giddy excitement filled his chest at the prospect of seeing the way the water would turn pink. It was alchemy in it's most base form- it also seemed like the only true change he could affect over himself at this, the eleventh hour. His roommate was shut in his room and completely oblivious. The time was nigh.

It happened with deceptive speed and simplicity. He slipped into the water, fully clothed as he was during his river experiment. Gripping the same old utility knife, Chan split his forearms in crooked seams. There was a moment of admiration for the blood diluting into the water; then consciousness split apart like the meat of his arms, and he was thrust into the deep, numb, dark.

When he woke up, he felt nothing but dull bemusement. It was caused by a mixture of shock and pharmaceuticals. He was in the hospital. His roommate wasn't oblivious, after all; he'd walked right into the bathroom, because Chan had forgotten to turn the lock. He hadn't expected Chan to be taking a bath at that time, and so he'd walked in quite innocently with a wireless headset jammed over his ears, playing Nine Inch Nails at an unreasonable volume. He was so startled by the scene in front of him that he'd dropped his phone on the tiled floor, his roommate would tell him later. He even showed him the web of cracks in the bottom left corner of his phone's screen as proof. _I took the laces out of both of my shoes, dude. I was fumbling so bad I had to keep restarting the knots I tied with them on your arms._ Chan had said sorry, and thank you. He had nothing else to say.

They were going to keep him for quite some time, his nurse intimated. She spoke in a near-whisper, as though he would shatter at the slightest of raised voices or pointed questions. She didn't bring up what he'd done, not even when she was changing his dressings, pressing her gloved fingers against the ladders of stitches in his forearms. The skin looked puckered and raw to him. Ugly. That was the only time he came close to crying; when the nurse changed his dressings, and he had to see all those stitches. At surface level, they were threads holding the edges of the gashes together. The real truth, Chan thought, the terrible honesty of the matter, was that his stitches were a gag. They were a gag sealing the mouths shut which he'd carved into his arms, and if the stitches weren't there, those red lips would be open and screaming. They'd scream without end. 

That all happened three years ago. When Chan met Felix almost exactly a year later, he watched as Felix openly stared at the scars on his forearms as they made small talk. He didn't find it rude. It was honest, and unashamedly open, and it felt good. It was so far from the way everyone else acted about his scars, a jolt to the system Chan wasn't expecting. For the first time, he felt as though he might be waking up.


	4. Nuclear Fission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recollection is the guilty pleasure of those who covet the past.

> _**"It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy."** -The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde_

He had met Felix, and the springtime of his life had began. The endless winter was finally over, the glaciers were receding. He found himself waking up from that fathomless sleep, the unending stasis of it, not all at once, but by degrees. The first time he saw Felix; then the first time they went on a date; then the fumbling nerves which made Chan's hands shake as they shared their first kiss. Recollection was, in Chan's mind, some kind of neural slideshow; time passed in images, in short clips of footage his brain had recorded and stored away neatly. Every frame that contained Felix was eye-wateringly vivid, colour upon texture upon shadow. It stood to reason that the memories Chan held of Felix would be beautiful, and yet they still drew only a pale comparison to the real thing; the real Felix, flesh, bone, and so much golden skin. Coming to know the physicality of Felix was as exhilarating and cleansing as plunging into ice cold water. His way of being affectionate was made of opposites, puzzle pieces with edges that didn't match up but created the intended image anyway. He was soft, beautiful, loving, and almost childishly adorable- but he _knew_ it, and used these traits to get Chan to lower his guard. When he'd gotten the upper hand, he'd become rough, single-minded, amusedly experimental. He was just like Chan; eager to push and be pushed, to pull and meet resistance sometimes, other times none at all.

_Felix choked him like he wanted him dead. His small hands pressed brutally hard at his Adam's apple, til it felt like it was going to pierce through his skin, until Chan's vision was ebbing away like mist. His throat worked jerkily of its own volition, and Felix made his skin crawl deliciously by mumbling in that inky-dark voice,"I like feeling your throat try to swallow, baby. It contracts like a heart beating under my hands, hyung, isn't that funny?" He'd said it without an ounce of humour in his voice, and his smile showed his canines in an expression that portrayed hunger instead of amusement. Chan was hopelessly overwhelmed by it, feeling himself losing consciousness, getting embarrassingly close to coming all over Felix's immaculate skin. Then the mood changed completely, and Felix draped himself over Chan's body, releasing the grip on his throat. Felix turned achingly pliant, like a small animal that has been caught by a dog and accepted it's fate, becoming limp in its jaws._

Afterwards, when Chan had fucked Felix until he was crying and begging for more and less all at once, they'd drifted to sleep together, and Chan had sifted through thoughts that felt fragmented and nebulous. 

_I've turned out to be the wolf after all... But how could I have known for sure until I'd bitten? Until I'd drawn blood, real or subconscious? Is he the lamb? Felix? My Felix? My pet? Can't... Won't... nature, nurture... Cause, effect? Freud? My Felix... Mine... The soil can starve... Nobody can take his body, or his life, I can't take h-_

But the thought could go no further. He lost it to sleep's sleight of hand.


	5. Morgenstern

> _**"I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real."** -The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde_

Tears pricked at Chan's eyes and nose, tiny needles, filaments, made of saline. It hurt to admit, but it was true. The world would always remind him that he could hurt and writhe like a germ in a petrie dish and that's all his life would ever amount to, remind him it could create a stone for him to trip over, could conjure an extra step to appear at the bottom of the dark staircase; the world could spit in his eye, twist his arm til the bones snapped, if it wanted to. The great secret of the world is that it _does_ want to, it'd _love_ to, it's positively _itching_ to do it. Give the world a single excuse, just one. It seemed like it didn't even need the excuse to be particularly good.

He'd had that outlook since early adolescence. It was as though he'd bought rose-tinted glasses, only to get home, open them, and find they were obsidian-tinted instead. The sun never reached its apex, in Chan's personal sky; it was always dusk, a perpetual shadow cast over life like a veil. Everything had the feel of a silent film from the 1920s, the colours of the world reduced to shades of black and white, people talking without making a sound. It was this worldview that he never wanted to see reflected in Felix, but it was emerging millimetre by millimetre. The tip of the iceberg was deceptively small to begin with, but then, it always is- if only to induce a false sense of security, so the ship will forge forward and dash itself to pieces. 

Wounds hadn't appeared on Felix's skin yet, the way they always seemed to on his own, and he was supremely grateful for that. The guilt that would impart on him would be heavy enough to crush him to smithereens. He knew in some way that it wouldn't have been his fault, but then again, hadn't he made himself the poster boy for self injury, with his catalogue of scars? It was confusing. Logic and empathy and fear mixed in a heady cocktail, and Chan was drunk on it. _Can't trust yourself, Chris, never could. Fuck, what kind of careless universe put Felix in your hands?_

Felix insisted he was okay, even as he skipped meals, skipped work shifts, skipped showers, _skipped skipped skipped._ The things he was avoiding piled up and up, and still he tried to outrun them, outrun himself. The weekend just been was the worst so far. Felix didn't call in sick, just turned his phone on silent, shoved it under his pillow, went back to sleep. Chan let him be, until the crying started. Felix didn't want to be touched, wanted to be alone, but Chan could hardly leave him, his pained sobs wracking his small body hard enough to make him look in danger of falling apart. It was an unnerving physical mirror of what was happening in his heart, and it terrified Chan. No words, just those unending sobs, painting the air in sickly tones, the blankets on their bed clutched in his fist, twisting, twisting. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, and spoke abruptly. It startled Chan so much his heart leapt into his throat. _Chan, please. Can you help me? Please? Help me please?_ His eyes were squeezed closed as he said it, his voice muffled by his blocked nose. Chan reached out a cool hand to rest on his feverish cheek, testing, wanting to know if it was okay to touch. Felix leaned into his palm with a shuddering sigh. _Nose, baby._ Chan plucked a tissue from the box on their bedside and held it to Felix's nose, wiping at his upper lip with the tissue after he'd blown into it. Felix's eyes were still closed. _I feel dirty, Channie. I feel so disgusting, everywhere, in my head, in my heart, too._ He clutched at his shirt over the left side of his chest. Chan was sure he didn't even realise he was doing it.

He lifted Felix over the edge of the bathtub and lowered him gently into the water. His tears had stopped, only hicupping whimpers left. Chan got in and sat behind him, held him against his chest, washed his hair. Felix's eyelids kept drooping, then fluttering, his body going lax as he struggled to stay awake. He was pliant and quiet, on autopilot, even as Chan dressed him and put him to bed. "Tomorrow I'll make you something nice to eat, okay, Lix? As much nutella on toast as you want. I won't even tease you if you get it all over your mouth." Felix was already asleep. That was okay with Chan, more than okay. Now he could do his own crying.


	6. Supernova

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Descriptions of dissociation are heavily featured in this chapter.

> _**"A horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow."** _ _-The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde_

Chan made nutella toast in the morning, just like he said he would. Felix ate it sitting up in bed, the curtains half-open, weak daylight pouring through the gap. Making food for Felix was soothing; the act of toasting the bread, piling on nutella, and cutting each piece into triangles was blessedly mundane. It was also reassuring to see him eating, even if it was white bread and chocolate spread. Chan had started him off with two slices of toast, knowing his appetite was small- but Felix wolfed down all four triangles, and asked shyly if he could have more. Chan took his plate and kissed him on both corners of his mouth, tasting nutella and sunshine and maybe some kind of hope.

Chan sat cross-legged at the end of their bed, eating his own toast. Felix hated peanut butter, even the smell bothered him, but it was one of Chan's first loves, and he just couldn't give it up. This was their compromise; Chan ate as much of the stuff as he liked, as long as he didn't sit right next to Felix while he did it. He offered Felix a bite anyway, trying to get a laugh out of him, succeeding slightly by earning an exasperated smile. Felix ate his third piece of toast with gradual speed; Chan watched as he scoffed down the first half, then attacked it's counterpart, barely chewing before swallowing each gulp. It was slightly unnerving, given how partial Felix usually was to picking at his food delicately, seeming to appraise each bite before he took it. 

There was a strange kind of vacancy in Felix's eyes as he set his empty plate down on the bedside table. His hands were smeared in crumbs and nutella, his lips looking about the same. He simply sat there, his hands upturned and resting on top of the sheet, looking at them absently. Chan swallowed his mouthful, the toast suddenly feeling jagged in his throat, trying to choke him. He put his plate down.

"Felix?" he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral, _act normal, be normal, and maybe this will be okay. Don't let him know you're scared._ It was with that thought that he realised he really _was_ scared. Felix didn't answer. There was an odd sense of shrinking, now, Chan feeling terribly small and helpless, entirely ineffectual. "Lix?"

That seemed to trigger some recognition in Felix's mind, because he blinked slowly, and his hands curled into fists. _He's smearing the mess in his hands,_ he thought absently. _But Felix hates feeling dirty, so why is he-? Oh god please don't let this be as bad as it feels it's going to be, I'm so fucking scared._ Felix looked up at him, looked _through_ him; Chan could feel it, his solid self turning transparent, disappearing, fading out. "Lixxy", he tried one more time.

Felix's expression broke like a shattered window pane, his face crumpling into a look of despair so desperate it made Chan's heart feel pulverised. He opened his fists, looking down at his sticky smeared hands as though they were foreign objects, attached to his wrists as some kind of cosmic joke. "My.... Why am I..." his words turned to a groan and he squeezed his eyes shut. Chan crawled up to sit next to him on the bed, taking his hands gently in his own. Felix's eyes were still shut, but he let his hands be held obediently. "Where'd you go, Sunshine? You seemed far away for a bit there. Are you back? Or do you still feel far?" Felix took a full minute to respond. "I'm not sure... I was thinking, and then I kind of," he shook his head agitatedly, "I kind of floated away. I wasn't even really here, Channie." His voice was whisper quiet and full of confusion. "It happens, sometimes. Maybe a lot, I can't really remember too well. That's the worst part, Chan." Chan watched a tear fall from his closed eyes. "I don't even know how often it happens. My memory is always so bad. It's all mixed up in my brain", he said, his voice raising, his hands curling back into fists as they lay in Chan's palms. "I wish it would stop, hyung, I can't-" Felix's eyes flew open, the despair still written vividly on his face, and he wrenched his hands away to get up and run to the bathroom. He threw up all of his toast into the toilet. Chan sat on their bed and said nothing. He felt like a balloon who's string had been cut. When he went to the bathroom to check on Felix, he was slumped on the floor between the wall and the toilet, crying in deep shuddering breaths. Chan took a flannel from the bathroom cupboard, soaked it in warm water and soap from the dispenser on the sink, wrung the flannel out. He crouched down by Felix, wiping his mouth, his hands, taking away any traces of nutella and vomit and toast crumbs. It was only once he was clean that Felix opened his eyes, his crying turning into small sobs. "I'm sorry I threw up the breakfast you made me", he said earnestly, his big pretty eyes full of tears and remorse. Chan could feel his heart cracking as he reached out to brush Felix's hair behind his ear. "No sorries, Lix. It's okay. Okay? It's alright, baby. Here, let's go back to bed, alright?" Felix nodded, wiping at his tears with the heels of his hands.

Chan lifted him from the bathroom back into the bedroom. It seemed as though he was carrying Felix a lot lately, in his arms, on his mind, in his heart. It hurt, but the worst part of it was not knowing when his arms, mind, heart, would just give out.


	7. Sunspots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abuse of prescription drugs occurs in this chapter. Thank you for reading :) <3

> _**"In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded"** _ _-The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde_

Felix was fading. 

_Take one tablet every six hours for pain. Avoid alcohol. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while on this medication._

He shook three tablets out of the bottle, the stark white circles sitting harmlessly in his palm. _Small,_ he thought. _Small, yet so powerful. The potential to harm or help. Some clever person in a lab somewhere synthesized this, and some company mass produced the little pills, and, ta-da; codeine was born._ Felix felt cynical, cheated, sitting alone in bed while the rain beat itself to death against the window.

 _Praise jesus for this bountiful feast, amen._ He dropped the codeine onto his tongue, relishing their bitter taste. It was an honest thing, the way codeine tasted; it knew you needed it, and that you were going to take it regardless, so it tasted like fucking shit just to be spiteful. Felix respected it. 

The afternoon was set to melt into formless putty. Felix had taken enough codeine to be comfortably absent, and it felt wonderful. His bones were like jelly, his skin was numb, his head felt impossibly heavy, felt light as a feather. He laid back onto the pillows, and tugged the blankets up to sit under his chin. The rain was only getting worse, and the sound of it lashing against the window was a balm to Felix as he drifted. 

_It started out as one tablet every six hours. It became three tablets every four hours. Numbers,_ he thought. _It all comes down to numbers. My whole life has been reduced to numbers. Hours, milligrams, minutes, seconds, milligrams again. "How much do you weigh, Felix? You're looking so small." Maybe I ought to answer in grams._

Chan would be home from work in a few hours. Felix supposed he'd still be in bed by the time Chan came through the door, but that was okay; it was par for the course nowadays. Chan would drop his bag on the floor by their closet, peel off his pants and jacket, and climb in next to Felix under the bedsheets. Neither of them would speak, but Chan would hold him tightly and tenderly, kissing at the back of his neck and smelling his hair. 

It felt good, and kind, and clean, and it meant everything. The reverence and love that Chan had for him pierced through the cloudy haze of his codeine high. They were in love; wasn't that enough?

Felix looped through the same thoughts as he floated, his mind untethered. His body wasn't much more than dead weight, leaving creases in the sheets, compressing the springs in the mattress.

_Isn't love enough? Isn't it sustenance enough to love and be loved? Why is the hole in my heart still gaping? Why does my soul feel like an open wound?_

_I'm an open wound,_ he thought nonsensically, on the cusp of falling asleep. In the moment, it had the sure edges and confidence of absolute fact. _The earth is round, ice is cold, violets are blue, and I am an open wound._ The words muddled together with images in his mind's eye, and as he fell asleep, the backs of his eyelids seemed to be blue instead of black.


	8. Solar Flare

> _**"The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a band of lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him."** -The picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde_

It was as though Felix came from heaven, spun from clouds and thunder, from the sharp smell of ozone that permeates after lightning strikes nearby. He was like heaven now, but in the worst ways; his skin was deathly pale like clouds on a mild day, and his lips were tinged blue. His form looked so tiny and vulnerable in their bed, the blankets swamping him.

Chan froze. The first syllable of Felix's name rose to his lips and died there, the second syllable never even being conceived. There was the sound of rain against the windowpane, the thudding of his own heart, and Felix's shallow, laboured breathing. The moment seemed to stretch sickeningly, like melted gum left on the concrete by some gross kid, waiting to be stepped on. He dropped his bag and coat in slow motion, the items falling like dice being thrown, and it was snake eyes across the board- he could almost hear the universe's voice piping up in his head. Lost the bet, go home, no winning for you today, Bang Chan.

When he got to Felix's side, kneeling on the bed next to his frail body, the boy didn't move. Chan shook his shoulders, gentle at first and then maybe unnecessarily hard, wanting some reaction, even if it was Felix crying out in discomfort. If he could feel uncomfortable, he'd surely still be lucid to some degree, Chan reasoned with himself. This concept gave him the confidence it took to slap Felix's cheek, though he winced at each dry smacking sound. After the fourth slap to his cheek, Felix's eyes appeared to move under his lids. He wasn't awake, but his eyelids were lifting enough to show a sliver of white. Chan bracketed Felix's cheeks with his palms and mumbled nonsense to him, flicking between telling him to wake up, and begging him to.

The slight movement of Felix's eyes was unnerving to watch under the thin film of his eyelids, but it was encouraging, too. Chan reverted back to shaking Felix by the shoulders, pleading in a non-stop stream for him to come back, wake up, please, Lix, open your eyes for me. Open them and look at me, and I promise I'll stay home from work all week to be with you, okay? I'll quit my job, it doesn't matter, Lix, just please, please- Nothing but laboured breaths, and small glimpses of the whites of Felix's eyes. Chan rolled him on to his side, remembering something about a recovery position, not knowing if it was any use in this situation at all.

He cursed at himself as he kneeled over Felix and listened to his breathing. Chan didn't like to think of Felix as addicted, as an addict, even though those were simply words to describe their reality. He should have seen the signs; should've been a safety net, there to catch Felix before he even realised he'd fallen. The result of his failings was this, Felix unconscious in their bed, still breathing by some small miracle.

Chan made a split decision, then, feeling trapped by the atmosphere in their bedroom and how far away Felix seemed, even though he held his warm body in his hands. He picked up Felix's small frame bridal-style, carrying him carefully into the bathroom, then lowering him into the bathtub. Chan didn't take Felix's clothes off, just turned the water on to stream out of the showerhead, ice cold and directly on Felix.

The effect was immediate; Felix's body jolted, his hands coming up to his face in a warding-off gesture, and he groaned low in the back of his throat. Chan's blood spiked through his veins, adrenaline dousing him in jitters. He shook Felix by the shoulders again. The motion, combined with the shock of the frigid water, had Felix finally opening his eyes. His lids flew open, and his lungs filled with a breath that sounded sharp enough to hurt. Felix looked around without seeing for a moment, still with his hands up against the spray of water, as if he could hold it back.

His pupils cleared when they fell on Chan, on his knees next to the tub, with his sleeves soaked. "Channie?", he croaked out, his voice barely sounding like his own. Chan stood up to turn the water off, not able to speak. With the water off, he helped Felix to his feet, ignoring the fact he was sopping wet and holding him close to his chest. "I thought you were dying, Lix, you were dying, fuck, your lips were turning blue, Felix, sweetheart-" Felix reached up to Chan's face with trembling hands, wiping at his cheeks clumsily. "

Come on Channie, no more tears now, okay? I'm here, I'm here, it's ok, I'm not going anywhere", he tried to say emphatically, instead just sounding tired and defeated. Chan hadn't even known he'd been crying.


End file.
